


Taking Things

by HeWhoIsMany



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Corruption, Gender or Sex Swap, Transformation, Vampire Bites, attribute theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25555954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeWhoIsMany/pseuds/HeWhoIsMany
Summary: Harry receives a magical pistol to investigate, but when he finds out what it does, it's already too late to stop what's happening to him.
Kudos: 3





	Taking Things

Okay, let’s get this over with. To start with, if you didn’t know, my name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. I live in Chicago, I love Burger King, and I’m a wizard. Not like a party magician, though I do know my way around sleight of hand, I mean a real, genuine, throws fireballs like they’re dodgeballs wizard. I’m even in the yellow pages, the only entry in Chicago under ‘Wizards’.

Most normal people just think I’m an attention hog, regardless of how many times it rains frogs or people’s hearts explode out of their chests. If someone doesn’t want to believe in the supernatural, they’ll ignore anything to stay happy.

This particular story comes from my early days, back before the war started and long before I’d started walking around in a grey cloak. I wasn’t in the middle of a big case, instead just investigating something an acquaintance brought to me for inspection. It looked like an old-timey pistol, a flintlock from the 1800’s, if not older, and there were runic symbols etched into the wood. It’d been sold at a pawn shop and the owner wanted me to figure out just what the thing did, if it was okay to sell.

The second I’d touched it, I knew it was enchanted with something, could feel the magic stored inside it. But whatever that magic was, it was nothing like anything I’d ever felt before. I was going to have to show this to the most knowledgeable person I knew, though perhaps ‘person’ wasn’t the most accurate word. Bob the Skull is a spirit of intellect, bound to a human skull, and aside from a perverted streak a mile long, he was good to have around.

The pawn shop I’d had to visit was blocks away from where I’d parked my clunker of a car, so that meant a long walk back, part of it through alleyways to cut down on time. The sky was overcast, without a single ray of sunlight able to break through to us down below. I didn’t realize what that meant until it was too late.

I was almost out of the alleyway and onto the street when a woman approached me. She was wearing clothes so revealing that if the wrong cop saw her she’d probably be picked up for unsavory reasons. Not only that, she had the body to go with it. I don’t want to be crude, but let’s just say I was pretty happy that my large billowing black duster gave my groin enough cover. She was giving me a come-hither look, but I could tell right away something about her wasn’t right.

She kept walking closer, staying just outside of my reach. The woman was circling me, like a predator does to prey that doesn’t stand a chance. “Bianca sends her regards.” Those words were all I needed to hear, especially when it came to killing my boner. That was no woman. It was a vampire.

The thing is, vampires come in a lot more variety than your average person knows about. Hell, there are more than I know about, and I punch the damn things for a living. This one clearly wasn’t a Black Court vampire, living corpses shambling around with the help of dark magic. Nor was it likely to be a White Court vampire, people bound to psychic hunger demons that fed on people through sex, eating their lustful emotions until the victim was dead, usually. No, this was a Red Court vampire. The reference to Bianca, a big time vamp of that court who lived in the area, and who I had made an enemy of a while back, made that obvious. But so did the way she looked, when I paid more attention.

While they had once been human, fully converted Red Court vampires as actually giant bat demons, and they only look human thanks to their flesh masks. They’re pretty good replicas, but once you’ve seen once break away from the strike of sunlight, you get a good sense of how to tell when it’s not real skin you’re looking at. “Sorry honey, but I don’t vant you to suck my blood.” I threw the back half of the taunt in a cheesy Dracula voice. Did I not mention I love to throw insults in a fight? Because I really do. The Tao of Peter Parker, as I call it.

Apparently she didn’t like the jab, because I watched as her muscles tensed. She was preparing for a strike. I hadn’t brought my wizard’s staff with me, since it’s a giant hunk of wood and to magical folks it’s like carrying around a rocket launcher. But I did have a few other weapons on me, namely my blasting rod (great for shooting out controlled fire) and my force rings (gathers up kinetic energy that throws it out). For reasons I couldn’t fathom at the time, I didn’t try to hit her with either of them. Instead, my mind turned to the heavy weight in my dusker pocket, and I quickly reached it, grabbed the magical pistol I’d just gotten, pointed it at my attacker, and pulled the trigger.

As I was doing this, I was trying to figure out why the hell I was. The thing wasn’t loaded. Even if it had been, I didn’t have the gunpowder to make it work right. Pulling the trigger shouldn’t have done anything.

But it did. I felt the magic in the pistol activated, and it did something I never would have expected. I felt the energy inside the magical object connect with me, with my soul, and then felt another connection. The vampire had frozen just before leaping at me, and I could feel the gun had made some sort of binding between us. I had no clue what it was, at first. Then, the vampire just passed out, hitting the cold alley pavement like a sack of bricks. I looked from her to the gun and back again. “Damn, I really need Bob to figure out what the hell that was...” I muttered to myself, before moving to get back to my car and get the hell out of dodge.

I didn’t mention it before, but I’m a pretty tall guy. Like, taller than most basketball players. So when I start power walking, I can really move. It didn’t take long to get to my car, the Blue Beetle, an old Volkswagen that had been repaired so much it was made of drastically differently colored parts, like the Car of Frankenstein. As I got the undefeatable car into gear and started to head back to my apartment, some things started to happen to me that I didn’t notice, since I was so focused on the road.

The first, and most obvious, change was one down in my underwear. I don’t think I really need to spell it out for you, but let’s just say my outie became an innie. A bunch of small changes touched my body, my hips getting a bit wider, my waist a little narrower, things like that. My chest was the subject of a pretty big change as two something’s started filling out the Star Wars t-shirt I was wearing in a way nothing had ever filled out any shirt I’d ever worn before. The last big thing was my hair. I never wear a hat, for personal reasons, but my short brown hair grew out a bit longer, until it was trailing the bottom of my neck.

You’d think I would notice my body changing radically, since it’s my body and all, but like I said at the start: it’s easy to ignore things you don’t want to be true. It wasn’t until I’d parked the Beetle in the gravel parking lot outside my apartment and caught my reflection in the driver’s side window that I noticed something was up. After that, all it took was looking down my shirt and seeing the somethings that weren’t supposed to be there to know something major was going on.

I was in such a rush as I barrelled into my apartment that I didn’t even have time to give a scratch to my enormous housecat Mister, something he would be sure to make clear was not okay at the next available opportunity. I opened up the trapdoor in my apartment and crawled down the ladder into my sub-basement. The second I came in, orange eyelights flickered on in the sockets of Bob the Skull, following my movement. He didn’t say anything at first, and I got the distinct impression he was staring at me. “...Harry. Did you realize you’ve got boobs now?”

Grinding my teeth, I hissed out, “Yes, Bob, I am well aware.” The fact my voice came out about an octave higher than I was used to was not lost on me. Then I realized Bob was staring at my boobs, and despite only just growing them, I still felt very indignant. “Bob, focus on the problem at hand before I smash your skull.”

“Do we know this is a problem? Because from my perspective, I don’t see any downsides.” Hearing that, I started gathering the energy for a kinetic spell, and Bob could see it. “Just kidding! Sorry, Harry, I’ll be happy to help you fix this.” I let the gathering energy dissipate, then set the pistol that seemed to be responsible down in front of him. “Ooh, even more interesting. Tell me everything.” I told him everything that happened, with my back turned so he couldn’t oggle me any more. After hearing the whole tale, Bob murmured. “I think I see what this thing is, Harry, but I don’t think you’re going to like it. Looking at the enchantments on this, it’s clear that ‘firing’ it creates a connection between the person holding it and the person it’s aimed at, like you said. It also knocks the other person out. But as for what happened to you, that’s actually the main goal of it. The connection takes certain prime characteristics of the being in question, then transfers them and overlays them onto the one who fired the gun.”

I ran the skull’s words over in my head, trying to make sense of them. “So you’re telling me...” I said, starting to figure it out. “This thing steals traits from other people?” That would explain how I’d suddenly become a woman.

Bob made a sound like a cough, and replied, “Well, yes, that’s a good way of summarizing it. What’s fairly clever is that it doesn’t even break the Second Law of Magic. The other person is knocked out, and you’re effectively transforming yourself. Not only that, but the changes only last until the next sunrise. But Harry, there’s something else-” Before he could finish the sentence, a thought occurred to me and I interrupted him, needing to know the truth.

“Stars and stones, Bob, am I going to become a Red Court vamp?!” After all, that’s what the person I’d shot really was. If I’d stolen her ‘essence’ or whatever, didn’t that mean more than just her gender?

It sounded like I’d hit the nail on the head, based on the uncomfortable hemming and hawing sounds Bob was making. “Well, I can’t know for sure, but it’s possible. You don’t appear to have finished changing, as far as I can see. But like I said, the changes will all be reversed by tomorrow morning.” Anger like I’d never known flared up in me. It was easy for Bob to be so blase about it, he wasn’t the person losing their humanity! I grabbed the gun from the desk and climbed the ladder back up into my apartment. I felt weirdly tired by the time I got to the top, and before I knew it, I’d fallen asleep on my old comfortable couch.

Compared to turning a masculine body into a feminine one, turning a mortal into a vampire takes a hell of a lot of energy, especially when that energy has to come from the person themselves. That’s why my body had put me to sleep, it made the whole process easier. I was only out for a few hours, as the middle of the afternoon turned into evening and the sun set. Not long after night had truly fallen, I woke up.

I knew right away something was different. It only took a few seconds to realize what. I wasn’t a human being anymore. I may have appeared the same to anyone on the outside, but underneath the flesh mask sculpted into the shape of the body I’d gone to sleep in, I was a Red Court Vampire, all batty and everything.

You might rightly think I should have been freaking out, but I wasn’t. I rose from the couch with a long stretch, feeling my body under the fake shell moving in odd ways, getting a sense of what I’d become. Instead of shock or horror, I just kind of felt...normal. Well, not really normal, but like the new normal was normal now. My feminine body no longer felt strange, but comfortable. I suddenly knew ways on how to use it to get what I wanted, then I realized just what that really was. Not sex. Blood. I was a vampire who’d yet to feed, and the complete lack of blood inside me was a travesty that had to be rectified. I decided to do something about it, right then and there.

I threw off my duster first. It had coolness to it, sure, but if I was looking to bring someone in close for a bite, it gave off the wrong image. I considered tearing my dresser apart looking for better clothes than what I was wearing under the duster, but I didn’t exactly have a lot of women’s wear, so t-shirt and jeans with no bra would have to do.

I went out into the night and felt at home in it. My immediate plan was to find some guy, seduce him into an alley, and have some food. Not enough to kill him. The idea of killing some guy didn’t burden my conscience the way it had before, after all I was a demon at the time, but I knew that the change was temporary and any chance of becoming like this again would be impossible if I offed someone.

The bigger problem soon became clear to me: no guy was paying attention. I didn’t need my new vampire instincts to tell me why, I’d been a guy not long before after all. Not too many men were interested in a gangly woman a foot taller than they were with a modest bust and nothing else going for her. Even my sense of humor wouldn’t be of too much use. But, I still had the gun with me, and I realized it would be very useful.

I quietly slipped into a bar, making sure to keep the enchanted pistol hidden, and scoped out a target: a busty blonde with several men fawning over her, buying her drinks. One quick shot with the gun, and the bimbo was out cold. I left the bar and went into an alley, and soon felt the changes. My at best average-sized chest ballooned out until I had quite the prestigious pair of funbags, and my ass improved itself too, clinging to my jeans tightly with its larger size. My face changed too, probably becoming more traditionally feminine and attractive, and my hair got even longer, and blonder. A quick look down confirmed I was definitely a man-eater now.

Luring in some unsuspecting sap off the street didn’t take much more than a view of my cleavage and a pretty smile. He didn’t seem opposed to skipping straight to the kissing, which was his first mistake. Red Court vampire spit is a numbing agent, like the stuff dentist’s use on steroids. It’s also addictive in large amounts, but I did my best not to use more than I had too. Once he was out of it, I bit into his wrist and started draining him. Not too much, maybe a pint at most, but it was hard to stop there, let me tell you. When you’re a vampire, there’s nothing as pleasurable in the world as drinking someone’s blood.

Still, I had the good sense to cut myself off. I left the guy passed out in that alley, then went on for an entire night of fun. Stealing even more attractive qualities from the right women, sucking blood from men, it was a blast. I even went clubbing. With no conscience, no ability to think I was really doing anything wrong, it was hard to limit myself. When the sun rose, I had a belly full of blood and was satisfied with my (first) night as a vampire.

Once I was back to being a wizard, a mortal, and a man, I threw the gun in some corner of my closet and told the pawn guy that it was way too dangerous to sell to a normy, and bought it myself. I told myself what I’d done was something I could never repeat. After all, even if I hadn’t killed anyone, I hadn’t been myself.

I was lying to myself. It wasn’t long before I found the opportunity to take another little vacation as someone else, once again a beautiful Red Court vampire woman. I didn’t stop there, though. After my third night of drinking blood all around town, I started to wonder what life as a member of the White Court was like. So long as I didn’t kill anyone, well, it wasn’t like it was a big problem, right?


End file.
